As You Begin Your Journal

Your journal plays an important role in achieving your goals. Take time to think about its composition and organization.

How will you track food?

~calories, fat, protein, carbs

~water, other fluids

~vitamins, supplements

~medication

What about exercise?

Will you document sleep?

Do you want to include statistics?

~weight

~measurements

~BMI

~ blood pressure

~heart rate

~clothing sizes

~bloodwork numbers from the doc

~glucose levels

How about your goals?

~your dreams

~ reasons for them

~specific plans

~steps to take

~desired outcomes

Will you journal your moods and emotions?

~events of the day

~your reactions

~relationship between food and emotions

What about successes and stumbling blocks?

How will you organize all of this?

~daily

~separate sections

~separate books

~some online and some on paper

~graphs

How much detail will you include?

Will too much detail be prohibitive? Can you do what you need in a short time and space?

(Self-disclosure is highly therapeutic.)

Do you have concerns about privacy?

On this last point, please, remember that you control the level of privacy you want and need. Whether you are comfortable sharing entries with your friends or you'd rather secure it under lock and key, you are in charge. (see The New Diary for further discussion.)

Unrelated note: I just read about a simple way to document food when you don't have the opportunity to journal; simply take a picture of what you are about to eat and you'll have it saved for later noting.

Get ready to take some measurements in the morning on 1.5.12. Bring your scale, tape measure, and calculator.

Sources:

Pennebaker, J.W. Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotion. New York, NY: Guilford Press, 1997.

Pennebaker, J.W. & C.K. Chung (in press). Expressive writing and its links to mental and physical health. In H. Friedman (Ed.), Oxford handbook of health psychology. New York, NY: Oxford.

Rainer, Tristine. The New Diary: How to Use a Journal for Self-Guidance and Expanded

Creativity, New York, NY: Penguin Group, Inc., 1978, 2004.